Pragmatic Environmentalist Principles

Pragmatic environmentalism is necessary to balance environmental impacts and public policy. This means that evidence-based environmental risks and benefits (both environmental and otherwise) of issues need to be considered. Unfortunately public perception is too often driven by scary one-sided stories that have to be rebutted by getting into details. I believe that pragmatic environmentalism is exemplified by these principles. Note that some of these principles overlap.

Principle 1: Environmental Issues are Binary: In almost all environmental issues there are two sides. Pragmatic environmentalism is all about balancing the risks and benefits of the two sides of the issue. In order to do that you have to show your work.

Principle 6: Iron law of climate: Roger Pielke, Jr says the “iron law” simply states that while people are often willing to pay some price for achieving environmental objectives, that willingness has its limits.

Principle 8: Gresham’s Law of Green Energy: Gresham’s Law of Green Energy is named after Sir Thomas Gresham, a 16th-century British financier who observed that “bad money drives out the good.” Lesser shows that green energy subsidies transfers wealth and does not create wealth. The subsidies or “bad” money take money out of the system that was “good” inasmuch as it was being used productively. In particular he notes that “subsidized renewable resources will drive out competitive generators, lead to higher electric prices, and reduce economic growth”.